Professional Pictures With a Beautiful Background

I apologize for the quality of the pictures in this post. I was getting together with my friends Karen and Hélène to plan some things for our upcoming holiday, and by the time we got around to taking these I had gone through some terrible sleep, a very long and busy workday and loads of falafel. It was also dark already. SORRY.

(About that holiday: I'll be on a roadtrip on the West Coast of the USA between september 9th and 28th! We'll be in LA, Las Vegas and San Francisco so if you're in any of those cities and want to meet up, let me know! This blog will probably be a bit quiet but I'll try to get some pictures posted on my Instagram.)

Anyway, here is my version of the super popular Persephone pants pattern!

The story of these started with a need for a new pair of skinny jeans. These are the only jeans that still fit me, and I noticed they are almost see-through in the butt area and probably wouldn't survive my trip (wearing them feels like a bit of russian roulette at the moment). The fabric shop closest to me is on vacation, so I ordered two pieces sold as 'stretch jeans' from this place and thought I'd be good to go (it's where I bought the fabric for those other jeans). Those pieces arrived and... One had no stretch at all (or very little), the other one was not nearly stretchy enough. They were on sale and I could use them for other things, but I did decide to e-mail them suggesting they get a bit more clarity in their fabric descriptions (the way it is now on the site it seems it's all the same quality, but in different colours).

I got a bit of a snotty e-mail back saying I should have e-mailed them before ordering so they could have advised me on what fabric to get. I replied to this saying that maybe adding the stretch percentage to the fabric description would mean that people could figure this out for themselves, and got another reply telling me 'there's a picture of the fabric content with the percentage of spandex in the listing'.

Not the same thing, but I got pretty cranky about it so I didn't reply anymore.

After all this I had a cheap piece of fabric with no stretch and some time to kill before my second attempt at ordering jeans arrived (from the Fabric Godmother, who do post stretch percentages), so I gave the Persephone pants a go!

Everyone and their mother is making these or has made these, and I gave them a chance because they seemed to work on a variety of body shapes and sizes. I wasn't too worried about fitting since my measurements put me into a straight size 6 and I'm not crazy picky on the fit of my pants, but I wasn't sure if the style would suit me! So I treated it as a good occasion to practise some techniques, and when it turned out they fit really well after a first try-on I made an effort to finish them well!

We didn't get a clear picture of my crotch so I took this one on the floor.

The pants close with a button fly which came together without a hitch. I put a classic jean button on the waistband but went for flat buttons on the inside of the fly to reduce the bulk somewhat. They are a bit visible at times, especially when I sit down, but not enough to bother me! I liked the way the pockets are inserted, even though they are not exactly functional:

I wore these for an entire day and they are a lot more comfortable than I expected for high-waisted non-stretch pants. The pattern as drafted were not exactly cropped on me, but I thought full length was boring so I cut them shorter.

All in all, this was a pleasant surprise and unexpected good result from a mildly crappy situation! I'll definitely pack these for my trip!

I will leave you with this picture of my beautiful friend Hélène, providing moral support in the background: